If a person stole $100, admitting to stealing $100 would constitute a full confession. Claiming to have stolen only $50, on the other hand, would constitute a partial confession. Critical to our view, we consider confessions on a spectrum ranging from not confessing at all to fully confessing, with a range of partial confessions stretching between these two ends.

First, participants in the study were asked to recall times when they did something unethical and whether they confessed, partially confessed, or did not confess at all. Some categories of confessions are more likely to be partial than others, as you can see in the chart below:

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology They also analyzed how this partial confession impacted their emotions, and found that in the lab this partial confession made participants feel worse than either a full confession, or no confession at all.